LucidDream's Profile
Stat Summary
- Average Rating:3.7
- Helpful Votes:407
- Reviews Submitted:25
- First Review:January 9, 2012
- Most Recent Review:January 14, 2016
- Featured reviews0
Status:
Help Thomas find his master Akkad and fulfill a prophecy! Akkad is on a quest from Cleopatra herself, and must end a civil war!
Overall rating
3
/
5
3 of 4 found this review helpful
Light Egyptian Adventure
PostedJanuary 14, 2016
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
While not all bad, Cleopatra A Queen's Destiny is not among the best games from Kheops Studios.
The setting in ancient Egypt is interesting and and visually the game is pretty good, like most Kheops studios games, which makes the interesting locations come alive.
The story is alright, but it doesn't make optimal use of the interesting setting and the characters are highly underdeveloped.
The puzzles are of variable difficulty and quality but mostly too easy and not very creative. There are too many tasks that involve following recipes or similar instructions which feel a bit routine. Some puzzles are more fun, though, in particular those involving ancient machines.
All in all this is a reasonably fun game but I cannot really recommend it since most other Kheops games are better.
The setting in ancient Egypt is interesting and and visually the game is pretty good, like most Kheops studios games, which makes the interesting locations come alive.
The story is alright, but it doesn't make optimal use of the interesting setting and the characters are highly underdeveloped.
The puzzles are of variable difficulty and quality but mostly too easy and not very creative. There are too many tasks that involve following recipes or similar instructions which feel a bit routine. Some puzzles are more fun, though, in particular those involving ancient machines.
All in all this is a reasonably fun game but I cannot really recommend it since most other Kheops games are better.
I don't recommend this game.
Help Nostradamus`s daughter lift a deadly curse from a powerful family.
Overall rating
3
/
5
2 of 2 found this review helpful
Reasonably challenging but uninvolving adventure
PostedJanuary 9, 2016
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
2
/
5
Nostradamus: The Last Prophecy is one of my least favorite games from Kheops Studio whose games I in general really like. It's not bad as such, but there are many better games in the genre so I wouldn't really recommend it.
The graphics and the voice acting are good but not exceptional. I found the graphics in some other Kheops games, in particular Return to Mysterious Island, to be more striking.
I found the story lacking in depth and the ending was rather cliche. It seemed to be going for constant twists rather than developing in any particular direction and there was not enough character development.
Puzzles were of mixed quality. There were a couple of really good ones, in particular towards the end, but also too many "follow this recipe" puzzles and perhaps a bit too much need for trial and error at times. I guess the average level of challenge was quite good, but the many routine tasks made it less fun.
Overall I cannot really recommend the game. Despite some good puzzles I just did not find it all that fun. If you love some of Kheops' other games, like I do, you may want to give it a try, but if you haven't played any Kheops games I would recommend starting with Return to Mysterious Island or Voyage rather than this one.
I don't recommend this game.
Dracula Origin
Play as the vampire slayer Professor Van Helsing, hot on the trail of the diabolical Count in this thrilling Large File Adventure!
Overall rating
3
/
5
4 of 5 found this review helpful
Not for me
PostedJuly 25, 2015
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
Dracula origin is not a bad game, but in my eyes it is not a great game either. The game transports the player to an alternate universe where there are vampires, succubi and other supernatural creatures. The horror aspect of the game did not work for me at all. It relied too much on cheap shock tactics for my taste (e.g. horses that drink blood, butlers who eat insects..).
Character development is rather poor, although you do find some notes, journal entries and similar which give a bit more background on some of the characters. These notes also give the story a bit more depth, but not really enough to keep me interested.
I found the story to be too much black and white, good vs. evil for my taste and some actions you have to perform struck me as immoral at first, although I suppose they were justified within the universe of the game where people can literally be turned into demonic creatures.
Puzzles are of varying quality. Some of them were just tedious, such as one puzzle where you just simply to click on the eyes of all wolves, toads and whatever in a stone carving. Most puzzles are better than that, though. In some cases the puzzles are poorly hinted and require a bit too much trial and error. There was at least one puzzle where the solution does not make any sense to me. However, there are also genuinely clever puzzles.
Graphics are in general good, although the characters are not as well done as the backgrounds. In particular Count Dracula himself does not look particularly evil to me... The music is rather dull and does not help in building a suitable atmosphere.
I think I may be a bit biased towards this game, but personally I did not enjoy it enough to recommend it. I can see how others may like it though, so I am not recommending that you avoid it. If it looks like your kind of thing, it is probably worth giving it a try, but if you're like me you won't find it very interesting.
I don't recommend this game.
Help Professor Samuel Hunt travel all over the world and track down an ancient treasure. Figure out the mysterious artifacts!
Overall rating
5
/
5
19 of 19 found this review helpful
Great start to a promising series
PostedJanuary 5, 2013
Fun Factor
4
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
5
/
5
Level of Challenge
5
/
5
Storyline
4
/
5
Agon: The London Scene offers a variety of clever and original puzzles, excellent graphics and an interesting beginning to what seems like it is going to be an exciting story. On the downside, as the first episode in a series it is very short and the story only barely gets started in this first episode.
The best aspect of the game is the puzzles which are original, challenging but fair and logical and unusally well integrated into the story. Solving the puzzles requires paying careful attention to everything you hear and read and the puzzles never felt like a slight variation on a puzzle that is commonly used in other games.
The Graphics are excellent, the voice acting is good and music is appropriate although not all that varied.
The story is exciting right from the start, but unfortunately in this short first episode there is not time for the story to develop very far. The shortness of the game is it's only real weakness. However, there isn't really anything wrong with the episodic format as such. It is just that when a short first episode is sold at the same price as a full game you may feel cheated. Still, I think this is a quality game that is well worth it's price despite the short length.
In conclusion, with original and challening but fair puzzles, excellent graphics and a promising and exciting start to the story this is a great game that I would recommend to anyone who doesn't mind the episodic format and who isn't afraid of a bit of a challenge.
I recommend this game!
RealMYST
Experience the world of realMyst in 3D! Solve perplexing puzzles and return to one of the most popular PC games of all time!
Overall rating
5
/
5
28 of 28 found this review helpful
A classic and a fun challenge
PostedDecember 19, 2012
Fun Factor
5
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
5
/
5
Level of Challenge
5
/
5
Storyline
4
/
5
The original Myst was a real classic that started a new subgenre within the adventure game genre. "Real Myst" is Myst with free movement in 3D rather than movement between predecided points and an extra location to explore.
The game takes place on the island of Myst and a number of other locations that are connected to Myst through books. The protagonist is anonymous and the game starts without any introduction leaving it up to you to figure out what to do. Hints are given in notes, books and video messages left on the island.
The best aspect of the game is the puzzles. The puzzles are mainly based on figuring out how to operate various pieces of machinery on Myst and in the other locations that can be reached from Myst. The puzzles are challenging and solving them requires paying careful attention to everything you see, read and last but certainly not least hear. However puzzle solutions are always logical and make perfect sense once you figure them out.
The graphics are very good. The game world is detailed and well designed and the style of the graphics is highly appropriate and contributes to the atmosphere of the game. There isn't much music in the game, but the little music that there is is good and is used at appropriate occasions. Sound effects play a more important role in the game as paying attention to sounds play an important role in solving some of the puzzles. This results in some quite original and fun puzzles.
The weakest aspect of the game is probably the story. There is some interesting back story to read in the books on Myst but the gameplay is almost exclusively about exploring the worlds that can be reached from Myst and the actions you take during the game don't advance the story until towards the very end.
All in all this is a great game with challenging but fair puzzles, very good graphics and a large and well designed world to explore. I would recommend it to anyone who likes adventure games and who is not afraid of a challenge.
I recommend this game!
The Legend of Crystal Valley
Help Eve find her missing father and learn all about The Legend of Crystal Valley! Solve complex puzzles in this Adventure game.
Overall rating
3
/
5
7 of 9 found this review helpful
Uninspired gameplay in a fascinating fantasy world
PostedNovember 19, 2012
Fun Factor
3
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
2
/
5
Storyline
4
/
5
The Legend of Crystal Valley has some of the elements of a good adventure game. In particular it has an interesting game world and a good story. Unfortunately the actual gameplay is not that good, it is too easy and just not that fun.
The graphics are sort of a mixed bag. Backgrounds are always good and sometimes very impressive. Character animations on the other hand are inadequate. For example when you pick an object up you can clearly see that the character never touches the object. The music is quite good and always appropriate to the situation. There is no voice acting, but frankly I prefer no voice acting to bad voice acting anyway.
The puzzles are perhaps the weakest aspect of the game. They were much too easy for my taste. This is probably the easiest game I've played here on Big Fish and the only reason I give it a two instead of a one for challenge is that it is a story driven game where easier puzzles are sometimes appropriate (i.e. in a more puzzle centered game like Myst or Safecracker too easy puzzles would have been much more of a problem). Still, easy puzzles would make the game appropriate for beginners, what is worse is that the puzzles are not particularly fun to solve. There is a complete lack of creativity, with many fetch tasks where you are asked to bring a certain object to someone and puzzles I have seen many times before (but with a lower level of difficulty than in other games).
The game world is probably the best aspect of the game. It is inspired by Slavic folklore and feels exotic yet familiar. Exploring this world and learning more about it by talking to other characters is the best part of the game. The actual story progression is not quite as interesting as the world and the ending felt anticlimactic. Unfortunately, apart from when you learn something new about the game world the dialogues are not that well written and feel more like you are questioning other characters than as proper conversations.
Unfortunately, the gameplay is just not that fun. With the easy uninspired puzzles the main motivation to keep playing is to learn more about the game world. There are occasional insights into the game worlds mythology to be gained that keep the game interesting enough to keep you playing, but apart from that the gameplay mostly consists of performing simple tasks and interacting with othe characters to get from area to area and given the unispired puzzles and not so good dialogues this is not all that fun.
All in all this is a game set in a fascinating exotic fantasy world that could have been very good if it had had better puzzles and dialogues and/or if gameplay had been more focused on the aspects of the game that were good (i.e. exploring and learning more about the fantasy world). Unfortunately, despite the interesting world, the game is not that fun and while it is not an outright bad game, there are many better games out there and in the end I cannot recommend it.
I don't recommend this game.
Sherlock Holmes - The Mystery of the Mummy
Help Sherlock Holmes, the famous detective, solve the mystery of a man gone missing a mansion protected by Egyptian magic.
Overall rating
2
/
5
14 of 16 found this review helpful
A challenge - but mainly for your patience
PostedNovember 1, 2012
Fun Factor
1
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
2
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
The first thing worth making clear about this game is that it is a detective game only in the sense that you play a detective. The gameplay does not involve detective work at all. Rather it is all about finding the necessary objects and hints to move from one room of the mansion where the game takes place to another. Of course searching the mansion may somewhat resemble detective work but not more so than the gameplay in any average adventure game.
Searching the mansion is what the gameplay is mainly about. Unfortunately what this means in practice is moving the mouse cursor over every object to see which objects you can interact with which is not at all fun. It is made all the more frustrating by the fact that the mansion is literally cluttered with objects, most of which seem potentially relevant but only a small fraction of which you can interact with at all. For example there is a wine cellar where you can pick up some of the many wine bottles. The only way to find out which bottles you can pick up is to move the cursor over every one of them. Once you have found the necessary objects it is often not that hard to figure out what to do with them, although to be fair there are some challenging logic puzzles in the game as well. It is a challenging game, and I love challenging games in general, but in this case too much of the challenge comes from the need for this kind of very careful searching, in practice meaning moving the mouse cursor over every object, which (to me at least) is simply no fun.
There are also some timed sequences which is in itself okay, but it was annoying that it is often not even made clear why you die when the time runs out (apparently being in a dark room without a light source will kill you). The game also feels unpolished in several other ways, for example I found it annoying to have Sherlock Holmes comment "This door is locked" when I try to unlock a door with a key. This didn't exactly boost my confidence in the intelligence of Frogware's American/Fake British Holmes.
The graphics are adequate, although I've seen graphics which are both more expressive and less grainy in older games. The voice acting on the other hand is quite poor. Sherlock Holmes himself is played by an american actor with a badly faked British accent. The voice acting for other characters is even worse. The music is also really poor. It sounds more like elevator music than anything else and annoys rather than creating an atmosphere. There is no volume control in the game so you cannot even turn the music off without turning all sound off (outside of the game).
The story is okay, although not as good as I would expect from a Sherlock Holmes game. It is also made less fun by the fact that there is very little real story development throughout the game. Instead the game is mostly about moving from one part of the mansion to another. It is possible to figure out what is going on from notes that you find during the game, but this is in no way required to progress with the actual gameplay and it is only at the very end that Holmes himself has something really substantial to say about the actual mystery.
To sum up I found this to be a very dissapointing game with dull and frustrating gameplay that resembles detective work only in that it requires a lot of patience, poor voice acting and music and very little story development throughout the game.
I don't recommend this game.
Children have been kidnapped! Track them down as a forensic investigator in this realistic Large File Adventure game.
Overall rating
4
/
5
19 of 19 found this review helpful
Short and easy but fun crime scene investigation
PostedOctober 17, 2012
Fun Factor
4
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
3
/
5
Storyline
4
/
5
I like playing the role of a police investigator or private detective, so this game naturally seemed promising to me. I wasn't disappointed. The gameplay could have used a bit more variation and the game was a bit too short and easy, but it was fun to play, with a good story.
The gameplay consists of taking photographs of the crime scene, playing mini games to process evidence and linking different pieces of evidence together. The mini games are quite easy and the crime scene photography part can be solved by simply taking photographs of everything, in particular since a significant part of the objects you can take photos of are relevant pieces of evidence. The only real challenge therefore comes from linking pieces of evidence together. The links between different pieces of evidence are mostly fairly easy to find. One problem is that the game doesn't record the context in which pieces of evidence were found or what resulted from the forensic scientists analysis of them. Unless you take your own notes or finish the game in one sitting it is therefore easy to forget the relevance of a piece of evidence. It would have been preferable if the game had kept track of these things for you.
The graphics are in general good. Cutscenes are of high quality and the crime scenes are displayed in adequate detail when viewing them in normal mode. Unfortunately the resolution of the images are reduced when you view the crime scene through the camera for taking photos. This is unfortunate, since it means you sometimes can't quite make out what it is you're taking a photograph of. This makes it harder to look for the most relevant pieces of evidence and instead encourages photographing everything. I would have prefered if the game had made it easier to look for relevant evidence and rewarded finding the most relevant evidence early on, rather than photographing things at random. Voice acting is of unusually high quality.
The story of the game, which is told through cinematic cutscenes, is a fairly standard crime investigation story with a few (somewhat predictable) twists. It is made more interesting, however, by how the content of the cutscenes directly relates to pieces of evidence that you have found, making it feel like you are really solving the case. It is also delivered well, with good acting all around.
In conclusion, while the game is quite easy and a bit short and gameplay could have been a bit more varied, the game is quite fun to play and has a well delivered and interesting enough story that kept me motivated. I would recommend it to fans of police investigation/detective games.
I recommend this game!
Nikopol: Secrets of the Immortals
A mysterious pyramid-shaped spaceship has appeared over France! Now, it’s up to Nikopol to thwart a dangerous conspiracy!
Overall rating
3
/
5
10 of 11 found this review helpful
Pretty but confusing sci-fi adventure
PostedOctober 14, 2012
Fun Factor
2
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
5
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
3
/
5
This game seemed promising at first, with it's excellent graphics and a story based on the graphic novels of the revered french novelist Enki Bilal. Unfortunately the game is too confusing to be particularly fun to play.
On the positive side the graphics are in general excellent. Sound effects are also used in a good way and the music add to the atmosphere of the game. Locations are well designed and look appropriately futuristic and dystopian.
The two main problems with the game are the confusing story and the puzzles that often aren't well integrated with the story and that sometimes require a frustrating amount of trial and error, which is particularly annoying when combined with timed sequences. Apart from some frustrating timed puzzles and puzzles that require too much trial and error, there are also more interesting and logical puzzles which offer a good level of challenge.
The story seems like it could be very interesting if it was more coherent. Unfortunately the information you are given is not enough to figure out what is going on and there seem to be large jumps in the story, almost as if the developers had chosen to include a few different parts of the graphic novels in the game without caring very much about making the story understandable for someone who is not already familiar with the source material.
In conclusion I cannot recomend this game to anyone except if you are familar with the graphic novels and want an opportunity to explore parts of the world depicted in these novels. To anyone else the game is just going to be to confusing to be really enjoyable.
I don't recommend this game.
Help Mina and her monkey, Jep, flee a Mysterious Island! Escape from the wreckage of a helicopter and return to civilization!
Overall rating
4
/
5
11 of 11 found this review helpful
More island survival fun
PostedOctober 13, 2012
Fun Factor
4
/
5
Visual/Sound Quality
4
/
5
Level of Challenge
4
/
5
Storyline
4
/
5
The first Mysterious Island game is one of my absloute favourites on this site. This second game in the series I found to be somewhat inferior, in particular because it focuses more on the less enjoyable sci-fi aspects of the story and less on the survival aspects and because the new gameplay mechanic where you sometimes control the monkey is not quite as good as the rest of the game. However, it is still a fun game to play, with many interesting challenges.
The story is a direct continuation of the story of the first game and you are once again left alone, apart from your faithful monkey companion, on the island. While in the first game most of the story was focused on surviving on the island and the sci-fi elements only played a minor part and were only introduced towards the end of the game, here they are present from early on. I found these sci-fi elements to the story to be less enjoyable than the survival themed aspects and therefore preferred the story of the first game where they played a smaller role.
The graphics are as good as in the first game, with high quality graphics for the game environments and black & white drawings for explaining story progression.
The puzzles include crafting puzzles, which was the most fun aspect of gameplay in the first game. However, compared to the first game there is a larger proportion of other types of puzzles, many of which are less fun and some of which feel less well integrated with the story than the crafting puzzles do. In particulare, one new aspect to gameplay introduced in the second game is that you now control the monkey instead of Mina in parts of the game. As would be expected you have less options when playing as a monkey, and I found these parts of the gameplay to be less fun. There are still plenty of fun and interesting challenges to be found in the game, however, even though compared to the first game puzzles are a bit less interesting and fun to solve on average. The level of challenge of the puzzles is roughly the same as in the first game.
In conlusion, while not as good as the first Mysterious Island game, this is still a fun game that offers more of what made the first game so great but also has some somwhat less enjoyable parts. I would recommend it to anyone who, like me, loved the first game.
I recommend this game!